124 replies to this topic

[Milocinia]

Physics/gravity are a huge problem when it comes to real life battlemechs.

When it comes to actuators, balance and movement, the technology isn't actually that far off for small robots. If you don't already know about Boston Dynamics' self-balancing robots, they're pretty amazing to watch.

The problems start when you scale it all up. It's not just about the power requirements to move so many tons of metal and power the myomers but also the inertia involved. Large battlemechs just aren't going to have anything like the mobility we see in Battletech. Weapons platforms that could be moved from place to place before being bunkered into a new position maybe, highly mobile fighting machines no.

[Roughneck45]

Trollfeed, on 14 February 2017 - 12:41 PM, said:

Walking combat vehicles will come at some point, there are reasons why they are so fervently researching technologies connected to them.

It will be a long time, if ever, for them to become purposed for combat. The industrial sector is another story.

[visionGT4]

The only operational advantage mechs have over conventional forces is the potential to traverse and operate in terrain which tracked/wheeled AFV cant.

Rule of cool trumps all..

[Bishop Steiner]

Roughneck45, on 14 February 2017 - 11:52 AM, said:

But bro, Dire can engage at all ranges. If your ride can't engage at all ranges what good are you...

If you can't engage at all ranges... sounds like you discovered how to Meta competitively in Mechwarrior Online!

[FupDup]

Bishop Steiner, on 14 February 2017 - 01:09 PM, said:

If you can't engage at all ranges... sounds like you discovered how to Meta competitively in Mechwarrior Online!

Most meta mechs can actually engage at all ranges. That's one of the biggest problems with Battletech in general, that many long-range weapons are just as powerful pointblank as they are from the other side of the map.

[Roughneck45]

Bishop Steiner, on 14 February 2017 - 01:09 PM, said:

If you can't engage at all ranges... sounds like you discovered how to Meta competitively in Mechwarrior Online!

Its fun reading the sarna descriptions for the loadouts and then imagining how it would play out in MWO.

[Sunstruck]

if you look at pictures of Mars there is a lot of sharp asteroids and broken up crater terrain, it might make more sense to have legs rather than tracks that would get ripped apart on the rocks.

Also Mars doesn't have much atmosphere, so aerospace vehicles wouldn't be able to support much weight without huge flying surfaces.

If mechs were real the missles would be a lot more deadly, more like todays anti tank missles.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Sunstruck, on 14 February 2017 - 01:15 PM, said:

if you look at pictures of Mars there is a lot of sharp asteroids and broken up crater terrain, it might make more sense to have legs rather than tracks that would get ripped apart on the rocks.

Nah, I could always drive my M109 through stuff I couldn't walk through or was difficult to traverse on foot. And the M109 has a terrible track design because the tracks are so narrow. The Bradleys in my unit with much, much wider tracks can get to places my M109 only wished it could.

[XtremWarrior]

I think one of the only reasons that justify battlemechs usage is the "galaxy exploration and industrialisation part" that we don't see in this game.
If you had to chose one shape for a vehicle able to go through any type of environment, on any type of planet, to perform as many actions as possible, a humanoid one is not a bad option. A mech can fall and still use its arms to get up, or even use it's hands to "climb", even move rocks or trees.
Assembling prefab buildings, mining, even harvesting, a humanoid shape is made for a lot of possiblities.

Though, this fact justifies Utility-Mechs more than Battle-Mechs.

[Dogstar]

>I started to think about how battlemech performance would translate over to a real battlefield.

Ha ha! You fool! You've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is 'never get involved in a land war in Asia' - but only slightly less well-known is this: 'Never compare Battletech to the real world'!

Edited by Dogstar, 14 February 2017 - 01:47 PM.

[Mole]

If we're speaking realistically I think we may see some small 'mechs with military applications built at some point but they will not become masters of the battlefield by any means and will likely have very specialized roles rather than being the "new main battle tank". All-terrain scouting comes to mind. But they will be nowhere near the size of the kind of 'mechs we see in Battletech.

[GrimRiver]

If robots like these: https://youtu.be/-h5qpXO3isM can do stuff like that now then imagine if they were scaled up to building size in the year 2500+ could do, and by that time I'm pretty sure we would have mastered fusion power too.

Being that I'm also sure the rules of warfare would have changed massively too.

Of course if you just scale them up there will be issues, but I'm also pretty sure when the time comes that will be solved.

A real life mech: https://youtu.be/NCrBC_V92hY give it some time, we'll get there.

[Mole]

GrimRiver, on 14 February 2017 - 01:49 PM, said:

If robots like these: https://youtu.be/-h5qpXO3isM can do stuff like that now then imagine if they were scaled up to building size in the year 2500+ could do, and by that time I'm pretty sure we would have mastered fusion power too.

Being that I'm also sure the rules of warfare would have changed massively too.

Of course if you just scale them up there will be issues, but I'm also pretty sure when the time comes that will be solved.

A real life mech: https://youtu.be/NCrBC_V92hY give it some time, we'll get there.

I don't think there's any doubt that we will eventually achieve the technology to build a real battlemech barring any appoclyptic events, but the question lies with why? Why would we do it? There's not a lot of arguement to be had as to why building such a giant war machine would be practical in reality. Walkers will have a place, there's no doubt about that, but nothing on the scale of what we see in Battletech because there's simply no reason to do so. Will we have the tech? Yes. Will we have the reason? Probably not. I mean we have the technology to create a cart with square wheels, but we don't. Why? Because it would be impractical.

[Metus regem]

Mole, on 14 February 2017 - 01:48 PM, said:

If we're speaking realistically I think we may see some small 'mechs with military applications built at some point but they will not become masters of the battlefield by any means and will likely have very specialized roles rather than being the "new main battle tank". All-terrain scouting comes to mind. But they will be nowhere near the size of the kind of 'mechs we see in Battletech.

Powered Armour is the most likely extent that they will go, maybe small robotic suits that between Power Armour and full on Battle mech...

In other words some where bettwen a Night Hawk Powered Armour:




And the MADOX 01:




I just don't see the real world going much beyond that.

[Vanguard319]

The biggest advantage of a bipedal weapon system is mainly the ability to traverse broken terrain that wheeled or tracked vehicles have issues with, a very useful asset indeed. The problems and limitations however make them impractical, namely the legs being an obviously primary target, and the difficulty of armoring them while retaining optimal mobility. Here's a RL example:




Even if you can address the engineering problems, you still have to find a way to implement mech units into modern tactical doctrine. For example, how do you hide a 10m tall robot from aerial surveillance or protect it from an air strike? With a tank, you can at least hide under a highway overpass, or tree canopy.

[Metus regem]

Vanguard319, on 14 February 2017 - 02:24 PM, said:

The biggest advantage of a bipedal weapon system is mainly the ability to traverse broken terrain that wheeled or tracked vehicles have issues with, a very useful asset indeed. The problems and limitations however make them impractical, namely the legs being an obviously primary target, and the difficulty of armoring them while retaining optimal mobility. Here's a RL example:




Even if you can address the engineering problems, you still have to find a way to implement mech units into modern tactical doctrine. For example, how do you hide a 10m tall robot from aerial surveillance or protect it from an air strike? With a tank, you can at least hide under a highway overpass, or tree canopy.

Speaking from experience, highway over-passes and tree canopies do not provide much protection from Gunships looking to kill tanks...

[GrimRiver]

Mole, on 14 February 2017 - 02:06 PM, said:

I don't think there's any doubt that we will eventually achieve the technology to build a real battlemech barring any appoclyptic events, but the question lies with why? Why would we do it? There's not a lot of arguement to be had as to why building such a giant war machine would be practical in reality. Walkers will have a place, there's no doubt about that, but nothing on the scale of what we see in Battletech because there's simply no reason to do so. Will we have the tech? Yes. Will we have the reason? Probably not. I mean we have the technology to create a cart with square wheels, but we don't. Why? Because it would be impractical.

You ask "why?"

The answer is: "Why not"

People have always made impractical things not because they should, but because they can.

Which is good enough for me...well until they slap guns on it and turn it into a murder machine, then it's not cool.

I hope the future of warfare is a giant arenas with mech slugging it out; Solaris.

[razenWing]

A lot of people are raising good points... based on CURRENT limitations.

Can you drop a tank in any interstellar environment (high, low gravity, little to no atmosphere, etc etc) and still expect it to function with no roads? How many sand planets are humanity even going to colonize? So weight distribution problem is complete none-factor.

Also, comparing actual weapon range vs realistic weapon is just wrong. IF mechs are in real life, we have to assume their weapons would not be the comical 1 km range (which mind you, is designed FOR VIDEO GAMES), but like 50km cluster missiles and punch a hole through the mountain auto cannons.

Third, we are forgetting the protection values that is within the lore itself. Mechs are machines that pretty much camouflage from all known methods of electronic detection. They are like stealth tank with 1000 additional years of refinement. So no, when thinking of make believes, you can't just look at the tank of today and imagine that's what it's going to be like in 1000 years.

Also, while the leg weakness is true, but that holds true for all weapon platforms. You can easily rip treads off of tanks with IEDs. You can easily aim for the propeller blades of an Apache. So that's a common denominator, not a specific weakness. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out to take the mobile system of a heavy weapon platform. Cause I can argue it would be just as easily to kill a tread (which mind you, have more than 4 joints, but each individual "link" is a joint in itself, so you are looking at HUNDREDS of joints, not just 1 tread) than a leg.

So the question comes down to, exploring an unknown alien world with no roads and flat surfaces, which would be better? Legs or treads? I think the answer is fairly obvious in that regard.

(And with the glass cockpit, again, that's a common denominator. How many video games have you played showing a sniper killing a military helicopter through the window? So why are mechs singled out? And wouldn't future human figured out ways to reinforce that cockpit than just glass? And do you have no driver space inside a tank? I mean, an unmanned UAV/tank/mech is pretty much the only way to guarantee pilot/driver safety. So again, the problem is having a human inside, not the location of a human)

Edited by razenWing, 14 February 2017 - 02:51 PM.

[Vanguard319]

Metus regem, on 14 February 2017 - 02:29 PM, said:

Speaking from experience, highway over-passes and tree canopies do not provide much protection from Gunships looking to kill tanks...

It's still easier to kill tanks that are out in the open than one that is in some kind of cover.

[1453 R]

Battle armor - Halo-ish suits, combat frames, maybe Elemental-style units though those are dicey - are the extent of what you'll see for military 'mecha' systems.

Large humanoid robots are too vulnerable and poorly optimized for the myriad of reasons laid out in the thread already. Augmenting infantry, on the other hand, is something being actively pursued. I forget what they're calling Land Warrior/Future Force Warrior these days, they seem to change the name for no reason every few years, but those systems are what we're looking at.

Any terrain rough enough for a large legged vehicle to be 'practical' next to tracked or wheeled vehicles in, is going to be best traversed by augmented infantry anyways. For the resources it'd take for one 'Mech/mobile suit/Titan/whatever, you could likely outfit an entire platoon of troops with augmented armor and supporting drones. Robot muledogs to carry equipment, mil-hardened fliers for reconnaissance and man-portable 'air'strikes (flying remote-controlled grenades, anyone?), sentry systems to guard camps or hold chokepoints, IFF-reading mine systems that ignore friendly tags and blow the d!cks off of anything else...there's a lot of stuff you can build with the resources it'd take to otherwise put together a thirty-ton Supa Robo.